"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Letter to Robert Hooke

Newton's epitaph: "Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated."

"I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Quoted in D Brewster, Memoirs of Newton

"Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things."